Amazon Prime in Australia to launch early in 2018

Amazon Australia are planning to launch Amazon Prime in Australia which should boost their sales numbers. Currently Australians are frequently still buying from Amazon.com rather than their own new country site.

Amazon Prime is the tool Amazon use to tie sellers in and increase their annual spend so launching this feature will be key for their growth in 2018. Currently only two Prime features are available in Australia – Prime Video and Twitch Prime (a live streaming service predominately for video games). What Amazon needs is Prime Shipping which will undoubtedly launch early in 2018 and Amazon are already inviting Australians to sign up and be notified the day it’s ready to go live.

When Prime does launch in Australia, unlike the UK with one-day shipping it’s likely that the US model of two-day shipping will be adopted. It’s easy to forget that Australia is roughly the same size (at least width ways) as the continental US but much of the country is rural and by rural we mean that a farmstead might easily be a day’s drive from their nearest neighbour.

Pricing for Prime will be interesting to see – Many US companies have a habit of simply changing the $ sign for the local currency but Amazon have differentiated Prime pricing. For instance in the US prime is $99 per year but in the UK it’s £79 per year (slightly higher than a straight currency conversion which would be about £71). That suggests that Prime in Australia should be priced in the AUD$130-150 range although it’s highly likely that Amazon will have some heavily discounted introductory first year offers to tempt Australians to sign up.

It will also be interesting to see how long it takes Amazon to set up their own in house Amazon Logistics network of local delivery couriers. In the US and UK it’s customary for couriers contracted to Amazon to perform the bulk of Amazon’s deliveries but again the sheer vastness and large unpopulated areas of Australia could make this prohibitively expensive.

Amazon’s services such as Amazon Fresh and Prime Now have typically been rolled out in densely populated areas so a solution for rolling out Prime in Australia could be a two tier system of delivery where those in conurbations enjoy free one-day or two-day deliveries and those in remote parts of the continent still get free deliveries but with a slower delivery promise.

Watch for Amazon Prime in Australia to fully launch as this will undoubtedly start to boost sales on the site – Amazon Prime subscribers spend considerably more annually than Amazon’s non-Prime customers so they won’t wait a minute longer than they have to to launch Amazon Prime in Australia

Kevin

10 months ago

Amazon only had 1 fulfilment warehouse in Australia, so prime will be very limited and delivery longer than 2 days. Amazon should concentrate its resources on building 3 or 4 warehouse around major cities.

Kiri

10 months ago

Where is the source for this? The article reads as a speculation/prediction, but the headline presents it as a fact. Misleading.